Samsung Announces New Chromebook 2 with Note 3-inspired Design

Samsung has announced its new Chromebook 2 laptops, featuring a powerful Exynos 5 Octa chipset as well as its signature fake leather design. The budget laptops running on Chrome OS will be available from April, and will retail from only $320 – though that’s about $70 higher than the original $249 Samsung Chromebook.

The new Chromebook 2 will be running on Samsung’s powerful Exynos 5 Octa 2.1GHz eight-core processor with 4GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage (with 100GB free Google Drive storage), two USB ports (1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0), microSD card slot, HDMI port and a mic/headphone combo jack. The Chromebook 2 will be available in two variants: one with a standard 11.6-inch display with a 1366 x 768 resolution, and another with a 13.3-inch Full HD resolution.

Notably, these Chromebooks feature Samsung’s new fake leather design which was first seen on the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone. What’s also obvious is how powerful these Chromebooks are. Despite the ARM-based processors, the new Chromebook 2 has specs and connectivity options that rival most budget laptops and Ultrabooks.

The larger 13.3-inch variant weighs in at about 1.3kg, while the smaller variant weighs just over 1.1kg. The new Samsung Chromebook 2 will ship in April in the US in black and white.